Callie had been right. There wouldn’t be any help coming from any of her people. They were all too afraid of what Cassius could do to them. If Annalise wouldn’t help her, none of them would.
Now she was faced with the same fate as her sister, the only thought that played in her mind was the same as Odessa’s had been. If Cassius could control everything in the sea, maybe the secret to defeating him was to seek assistance from those not in it. The human she had spotted on the ship—the one in command of the others—would be the one to ask for help. If she was successful, she would gain the aid of an entire ship’s worth of humans and it might be enough to turn the odds in her favor.
If not, she could always try her sister’s idea of enchanting them. Maybe that would give her people enough faith in her to stand up next to her and fight. Either way, it was an idea, and one she had no choice but to try. She was running out of time—and options.
She swam toward the surface. It didn’t take long to find the dark shadow of the ship, close to where she had been sunning herself on the rock. A few other shadows dotted the water above her, making their way toward the island. She swam up until she was just beneath them.
Smaller boats, she realized, as she made out a few faces through the water. Some of the humans were heading to land. There were men, women, and children on these boats. Most of them reminded her of the woman she’d seen on the ship. Dark skin, hair, and eyes and all wore similar, fringed clothing—and all of them looked happy to be off the ship.
It was just as well, Nerida decided. She might have better luck now that there were fewer humans aboard.
She swam toward the ship. Once she reached its side, she broke the surface of the water and took a cautious look around. An eerie fog had completely enveloped the boats now.
“Best we do our part,” she heard someone say from the ship. “If the cap’n comes back and we’ve not caught a single fish, he won’t be happy.”
Nerida’s spirit dropped. The one she hoped to see wasn’t up there. The voice in command sounded nothing like the one she had heard before. She nearly turned to dive back below, when a soft, golden glow caught her attention. Her necklace, which still held the pixie’s remains, dipped in time with the waves. As she watched it, it pulsed against her skin and she felt immediately more certain of herself. Maybe, just maybe, instead of convincing one of them to help her, it would be easier to enchant them instead.
She took a deep breath and then began to sing the same words her sister had used. “My love sails on the dark, black sea. While I watch from below…”
The sounds from the ship quieted, as if she had indeed placed the beginnings of a spell upon them.
She dove back below the surface and sank a short distance down, then turned, and swam as quickly as she could. There was no going back.
She leapt from the sea, immediately feeling the brush of warm air as her body left the water. Even through the mist she could make out the wide, wooden railing around the top of the ship. She had given herself enough of a jump that she managed to reach out and grasp it and pull herself up.
Settling on the railing, she held back a gasp as the familiar, sudden pain zipped along her tail. She flipped it out against the floorboards, and continued her song, lest the humans became disenchanted with the small delay of her arrival.
“As time goes by, I wait for my love. My love sails on the dark, black sea…”
As the last bits of water ran down her body, she felt her body change. The scales left her body. She looked down to see them disappear from her chest first, then they left her stomach. Her eyes flickered down to her tail, which had gone translucent, two slender legs taking its place. She clenched her tail’s muscles and watched as the legs drew up closer to her.
“One day he shall return, for that I will wait. My love sails on the dark, black sea…”
She chose this moment to look at the faces of those around her. There were still quite a few humans on this ship and they all were staring at her, unblinking, with wide-eyed stares. She’d done it! She’d enchanted them! She gripped the railing and put a bit of weight on her new legs.
The pain that shot up them was excruciating and nearly made her fall, but she concentrated and kept her footing. It wouldn’t do to have come this far and fail. Carefully, she took one step…and then another, all the while the sharp, stabbing pain shot up from the bottom of her feet and up her legs.
This is what comes from taking the shape of humans, she thought, then steeled herself against it, choosing to concentrate on the faces of the humans and on the task at hand. She stopped at each one, peering into their blank faces, gazing into their vacant eyes. Which would be strong enough to help her defeat Cassius and take back her kingdom? The one who had been referred to as cap’n had been her obvious first choice, but since he was not here, surely one of these others would do.
“One day he shall return, for that I will wait. My love sails on the dark, black sea…”
“Fools.” The word caught her off-guard and broke her enchantment just enough that she could see the beginnings of awareness show in the eyes of one human, a young one with missing front teeth. “Have ye no sense enough not to listen to her words? She’s bewitched you all!”
A dark man with swirling blue waves etched on his skin was bound to a pole in the center of the ship. He was huge, every bit as big as Cassius himself, with muscles rippling from the cords popping out of his neck, down his wide arms, then to his bare waist. He struggled against the rope, causing a row of golden rings in his ear to make tiny tinkling sounds as they bounced against each other. He caught her looking at him and bared his teeth, showing her their sharp points. None of the others that I’ve seen have teeth like this, Nerida thought, catching herself wanting to lean over and inspect them further. From the looks of things, he’d deliberately sharpened them into points.
She stopped when she felt the atmosphere shift. The enchantment was wearing off, no doubt the result of one man who had not fallen prey to her song. She began singing the song from the start, and immediately felt the soft fall in the air as it once again became heavy with magic.
The man at the pole grew frantic and struggled against the ropes that bound him to it. What had he done that they had tied him up so? She noticed now that all of the others were a good distance from him even before she had bewitched them, as if they had feared him. Slowly, she walked toward him, cautiously watching the others as she passed among them, lest the spell break at any moment. The pain in her feet and legs had not subsided at all. So far, she had managed to ignore it, but she wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer. She wasn’t meant to walk as a human here, and her body was wasting no time telling her as much.
“She’ll kill us all! Wake up, ye fools! Can’t ye see through her?” The captive man looked from one man to the next, searching for someone to shake free of her magic—for someone to help him.
“One day he shall return, for that I will wait. My love sails on the dark, black sea…” Nerida reached out and slowly traced a finger down the man’s muscled shoulder. He twitched under her touch. A scabbed welt running toward his back caught her attention. She walked around the pole and found the man’s back to be a medley of crisscrossed cuts and welts, running against the blue swirls that were painted into his skin. Someone had punished this man severely. She circled to gaze into his face, wondering what crime he had committed to be inflicted with such wounds.
She saw fear in his eyes, but there was something dark in them, too. Something that reminded her of Cassius. Perhaps he was the one she needed to defeat the sea king. After all, he had been strong enough to survive punishment and evade her enchantment. She ran her fingers along the ropes holding him fast.
“My love has returned, has returned to me…” Through his struggling, one of the knots had started to unravel. Nerida loosened it the rest of the way. The ropes fell free and an instant later, the man pushed away from the pole and started toward the nearest pirate, hand outstretched to take a weapon
from the man’s side. She jumped, catching him around the waist. Frustrated, he yelled, the sound cut through her enchantment like a sharp blade.
The men around her began shaking their heads in an effort to shake her magic free from their minds. Then the pirate wrenched against her, trying to loosen her hold around him, but she held fast. Luckily, the momentum from his struggles propelled them both to the railing. It was now or never. Willing every bit of power she had left, she propelled them both over the side of the ship, hoping the man held tightly in her arms would survive the fall.
Just before she felt the water take them, she finished her song, giving the humans a small warning, should they decide to follow.
“My love has returned, has returned to me. And now he will die in the deep, black sea.”
The chilly water swept over them and immediately pulled them deeper into a swift current that whisked them a safe distance below. Nerida felt her tail return the second she was submerged, the pain fading like a nightmare. She tightened her grip on the man still fighting in her arms and rode the current, only flipping her tail a bit here and there to steer them around the piercing towers of ice that rose around them.
The man wasn’t struggling against her nearly as much as she had expected a moment later. In fact, now he wasn’t moving at all.
What if I killed him? There wouldn’t be any help coming from him if he was dead. His head rolled against her shoulder and she saw a few bubbles escape from his nose. He was still alive, though he might not be for much longer if she didn’t get him above the water so he could breathe.
She broke away from the current and headed toward the surface, twisting in a way that the man’s head would go above the water. She flattened her hand against his broad chest and felt the steady beat of his heart. Once his head left her view, she heard him cough and splutter, then take a deep breath, but still he didn’t fight against her as she thought he would. For one recently stolen from his people, he seemed relaxed, content to be pulled by a mermaid through the water, away from his ship and those he knew.
Maybe he wished to leave them. Perhaps convincing him to help me will be an easy task.
She spotted a jutting stone facing and knew she was getting close to her destination. This was one of the few areas of her plan she had actually thought through. During her explorations of the surface, she had happened upon a cavern. This was where she would explain her situation to him, in complete, hidden privacy, far away from the eyes of humans and merfolk.
She rose above the surface just long enough to give him a single instruction. “Take a breath.” She pulled him under and swam through the mouth of the tunnel. The man tensed in her arms.
“I promise I have no wish to harm you,” she told him, her words echoing against the rock surrounding them. She didn’t know how much he understood as she pulled them deeper into the cave, but he seemed to comprehend her meaning and relaxed enough that she managed to drag him the last distance of the passage. The second they cleared the rock, she surfaced, and pushed the man farther up, out of the water, so he could breathe again.
As they reached the shallows, she felt the scrape of the cavern floor against her tail, and everything changed. Once his feet brushed the bottom he wrenched out of her grasp, and flailed the last few yards through the water to the shore. He somehow managed to find a jagged shard of stone along the way and the instant his feet met dry land, he spun and turned on her, teeth bared, his new weapon poised above his head.
“Wait!” she managed, her tail quickly propelling her backward a short distance. “My promise is true. I have no wish to harm you. I came to seek your help.”
He had started toward her, but stopped when she spoke. Though he still gripped the rock and held it in a way that showed he could kill her if he managed to get close enough, his eyes narrowed, as if he had decided to hear her out.
She took a deep breath and continued. “I am Nerida, daughter of the sea king, Muir. I need help getting my kingdom back.” Here, she stopped, uncertain what exactly she wished to ask of this ferocious man with the pointed teeth. She frowned. To her surprise, he frowned, echoing her expression as his lips pressed together and his sharp teeth disappeared from view.
Finding it easier to think when he wasn’t threatening to rip her apart, she took another breath and started again, this time from the beginning. She quickly gave him the story of their arrival in the Never Sea, the deal made with the water sprite, the untimely death of the two sea kings, and ended with her plight and impending marriage to Cassius, which, she explained, was her reason for seeking aid amongst humans.
A loud laugh echoed against the walls of the cavern. At first, she thought the man in front of her was the one who had thought her situation amusing, but one look at his face proved the laughter hadn’t come from him. He looked as shocked as she felt. The one responsible, however, was high above them, gaily swinging his legs from a perch at an opening in the ceiling Nerida hadn’t noticed before.
“Peter,” she said. Her voice had taken on a reprimanding tone, though she hadn’t meant for it to. Like a spoiled child, he responded, his face turning down into a childish scowl, before he dropped from his perch and flew around them a few times.
“You’re asking grown-ups for help? My, aren’t we desperate,” he chided as he dipped closer to her. He pointed to the man and frowned, his own expression looking a good bit like theirs. “Where did you find him, anyway? There aren’t any grown-ups on Neverland.” His face changed, and grew darker, as if something evil lurked just under the surface. “There are never any grown-ups on Neverland.”
“There are quite a few now. You just don’t know about them,” Nerida said, finding her voice. “You should go and see for yourself.”
Peter gave her another dark look and, without another word, zipped back up to the top of the cavern and disappeared from sight, presumably to check out the newest inhabitants of Neverland.
The eyes of the man in front of her were wide as he stared at the top of the cavern. Nerida supposed it wasn’t every day a human saw both a mermaid and a flying boy. She chewed on her bottom lip and waited until he looked back down at her.
“What would a sea witch be needin’ of Black Caesar?” he asked. “Ye have the power to enchant a ship full of pirates, yet ye take the one who didn’t fall to yer magic. There be plenty of young lads aboard who would have done whatever ye asked.”
“I needed the help of someone who is strong enough to help me defeat Cassius. You were strong enough to not be swayed by my magic, perhaps you’ll be strong enough to withstand him, too.”
“And if I have no inclination to help ye?”
Nerida shrugged. “Then, I leave you to find your way back out. It’s quite a swim.” She held her breath, hoping she had managed to strike a chord with him. From the look on his face, it appeared she had.
“So if I help ye and we win against this Cassius, will ye let me go free? Do ye give yer word?”
“Yes. If you help me, I promise you’ll go free.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment as his gaze left her and took in his surroundings. He looked upward, to the place Peter had disappeared, then he shook his head. It was a quick motion that sent the small, golden rings at his ear tinkling. The sound reminded Nerida of the chiming voices of the water sprites.
A decision flashed in his eyes as the man bared his teeth. “I am the pirate Black Caesar.” He gave her a dark glare. “I help no one. The only promise I make is to kill whoever finds me next.”
5
Human You Shall Be
THE NECKLACE PULSED against Nerida’s skin as she made her way back toward the cavern, reminding her of the promise she’d made to the pixie whose remains were still inside. She needed to keep that promise and say a proper goodbye to the tiny being. Now would be as good a time as ever. The human in the cavern could wait a few moments longer. Setting the pixie’s dust free on the island shouldn’t take long. She doubted the man in the cavern had changed his mind to help her, reg
ardless of the time she’d given him to think her offer over.
Nerida swam to the surface and cautiously popped her head out of the water and took a quick look around. She had hoped someone would be nearby—someone she could entrust to take the pixie’s remains to shore so that she wouldn’t have to break the rules again.
There wasn’t a human to be seen. Not a Neverling, not a pirate, and not Peter Pan. She would have to do it herself and hope she wouldn’t get caught.
She let the tide pull her to the shore, and when it ebbed back to the sea, she planted her hands firmly in the sand to anchor herself, and waited for the tingling magic to take her tail away.
Seconds after the water left her skin, the human legs appeared. Nerida took a deep breath and stood. She wobbled for the first few steps as she tried to gain her footing, but finally looked around. The tree line was a short distance away and it looked like the perfect place to leave the pixie’s dust.
Sharp jabs of pain shot up from the bottom of her feet with every step, but she ignored them and hurried on. The longer she stayed out of the water, the greater her chances were of being found. Once she stepped into the shade of the first tree, she felt safer. She sank down to her knees, happy to be rid of the pain of walking, and pulled the necklace up and over her head.
The shell pulsed in her palm. She lifted it up, eye level, and looked at the thin line of sparkling gold that ran down the center, wondering if it was going to be as easy to open as it had been before. She traced the line with her thumb and pressed her nail into the center. When it didn’t, she gritted her teeth and pressed harder.
Just when she thought she would have to give up and beat the shell against a rock, it opened and the small glittering pile of pixie dust filled her hand again.
The Untold Stories of Neverland: The Complete Box Set Page 30